Multiplying Ignorance, Deferring Action: Dynamics in the Communication of Knowledge and Non-Knowledge

ABSTRACT

Under the umbrella terms, ‘agnotology’, ’strategic ignorance’, and ‘willful ignorance’, scholars have identified and unpacked the mechanisms and strategies involved in producing and maintaining ignorance. These analyses tend to have in common that strategic ignorance is about avoiding, hiding, or rendering existing knowledge unreliable. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s sociological concept of communication, we supplement these accounts with an analysis of how ignorance can be produced and maintained by means of communicative selection. Taking the emergence of the zoonotic disease LA-MRSA in Denmark as our empirical case, we explore the management of ignorance under conditions of non-knowing. Our analysis demonstrates how ignorance may be not only maintained but also multiplied without hiding knowledge, keeping secrets, or creating doubts. The analysis thus sheds new light on the dynamics through which ignorance is produced, while knowledge is on full display and acknowledged. The analysis furthermore shows how strategic interests are coupled to ignorance by means of communicative selection.

KEYWORDS:

• Agnotology
• ignorance
• non-knowledge
• strategic ignorance
• zoonosis

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Morten Knudsen

Morten Knudsen is associate professor at Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School. His research focuses on knowledge and ignorance in processes of organizing and management. His work on topics such as self-inflicted ignorance, organizational views, reflexivity, critical performativity, management development and authority has been published in journals such as Organization Studies, Soziale Systeme, Management Learning, M@n@gement and Journal of Management Development.

Sharon Kishik

Sharon Kishik is a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School. He is currently involved in a research project on gendered formations of educational interests and aspirations in primary and secondary schooling. He also works within the fields of social epistemology and the sociology of ignorance, studying strategic ignorance in organizational contexts.